knight of ivy

excerpt

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as they did with his brothers, men spoke the praises of the earthen knight in worship, in temples, in the erection of great conservatories and schools. it was taken as a sign of his favor when ivies laced such a place of worship, but in point of fact, it had nothing whatever to do with him. sometimes he felt it, other times it was as one sensation in a thick sphere of sensations. since he could extend no hand nor offer any words to them, he let them believe what they would.

what was known of this dense knight, so packed with earth he could not move? when his brothers emerged from the whirling fantasy of creation, he remained bound to a single spot. through some universal irony, his unsolid brothers could never manage to dig him up. and he, made of dirt, solid earth, sodden flesh, what joints had he, or ligaments to move them? under the weight of his element, where was there even to move?

though denied individual movement, his sensation of body and ability to detect vibrations extended into all earth beyond. if he wanted, he could run his consciousness over the fingertips of great mountains, or retreat into ancient cliffs. all these things were not his body as we might understand it, but his astral body-- royal terrestrial body. the narrowest caverns which dribble into themselves knock small pebbles against his body on one side, his body on the other, and the pebble itself, formerly of his body.

as all things grow from him, he can speak to his tributary children, not only plants, but their predators and cohabitors. he feels feet that wobble through moss, knows hands that ramble over all barks in all forests. he lives the twining of ivy that creepily unfurls over things also made of his body-- clay, glass, rock. he is wrapped a million times over in hairs, fingers of roots, tendrils of nutrient-seekers.

and sometimes a sharper jag of root or adventurous subterranean creature will touch on his actual body, something like the size and shape of a man, as if a sculpted effigy of heaviest stone. this brings all thought zipping back into his immovable self, impenetrable, not quite asleep, and he remembers that he is, for all appearances, stuck.

with each accidental reminder of this single form, his retreat back into extended consciousness is greater. he rushes to creek beds, continually soothed and changing; to the fungi which coat skeletons, their spores at first wind-carried and gently set on the surface and then sinking deep into marrow, breaking open the porous structure and touching again his body when disintegrated; to morning glories maligned by infestation, sick with too much moisture, flopping onto a sidewalk from a windowbox; to the disparate and ephemeral dance of the desert, losing some matter to his brother the sky and taking some volume himself, shifting dunes like cat shoulders rotating over and through his body; to great stalks of wood in tropical jungles, massive pillars of life, abundant with branches, intermingled with themselves, himself, roots all knuckled together in some ancient child’s dance.